Our BMW battery replacement service includes identification of correct size and fitting to drop in place of your old one, installation and registering the new battery in your cars’ computer logs just as it would be at a main dealer. All at your doorstep with our mobile service.
We source our batteries from reputable UK distributors and operate a fully transparent pricing structure, so you will know how much you have paid for your battery and the portion for our services made up of technical guidance to include fitting and in vehicle registration.
All our batteries come with manufacturers’ warranty.
We do not charge VAT for our services. The price you pay is cost of battery + service charge.
About car battery brands
Whilst some brands are popular and can price their products at the top of the scale, there are others who provide similar value at lower cost. Clearly the more established brands have optimized their batteries over many years of R+D and therefore demand higher rates for their products. Document titled 100 Years of Bosch Batteries is such an example.
Most popular brands of car batteries and manufacturers can supply the same battery that your came was fitted with when new. For example, Varta, Bosch and Duracell among others such as Lucas, Hankook and Exide.
Since our mission is the get you the best deal possible, your battery replacement quote will typically include three options or tiers of product. We can supply and fit a budget, standard or Premium solution. What ever you prefer we leave that up to you to choose the right solution based on your individual needs.
How to determine if you need a new battery
BMW supplies its new cars with rebranded Varta batteries. These fall in the Standard range of our chart of types of batteries.
Due to chemical make up of car batteries, it is not very easy to determine when your existing battery might have reached its’ end of life and whether it is time to replace it.
Even professionals use a number of metrics to give individual advice on this subject. For example metrics such as how old your battery is, the brand and other factors such as your description of symptoms along with some technical knowledge of whether your alternator is actually working and equipment fitted to your car.
The alternator is basically a generator that is driven by your serpentine belt wrapped around your engine’s crankshaft and acts as your battery charger. We don’t usually see all the pulleys and belt that drives the alternator and other components such as air conditioning, power steering and water pump because, modern cars have aesthetic plastic covers over their engines to hide all the complicated stuff underneath as we pop up our bonnets and take a peek underneath.
There are some methods such as measuring the running and standby voltage levels using a AVR (Ampere Voltage, Resistance) or more commonly known as a multi-meter. However, these do not give you a very reliable indication, since all cars have a different set of equipment and the frequency of use for each accessory in your car. Particularly when the engine is not running and so your battery is not being charged by the alternator in your engine bay.
Other reasons why your battery is not performing
If your battery is not that old but it looks like it needs to be replaced. Other factors should be taken into consideration.
First and most obvious thing to check is that your alternator is okay. And also that your serpentine belt is in good condition. Modern cars are equipped with more and more electronic accessories ranging from start-stop engines that strain our batteries each time we stop at traffic lights. All the way up the chain of luxuries including electric tail-lifts, xenon headlights, electric seats, multi zone air conditioning each with their own blower motors and many more electric motors to drive windows, sunroofs, multiple cameras for all round vision and DVR for logging events as we drive. All drawing energy from one battery. Fortunately, our alternators keep our batteries topped up but sometimes we may do short journeys and the battery simply does not have enough time to fully charge and in any case the chemistry can only guarantee a finite charge discharge cycles with the battery becoming ‘worn’ or weaker as it is used over a time.
There are good reasons as to why battery manufacturers limit the warranty on these, that is because they are not intended to last forever.
Another way is to check the manufacture date of the battery and assume it’s should be okay for three to five years from start of their service life.
To retain maximum resell value of your vehicle, it is prudent to ensure all electrical equipment work and you have serviced your vehicle as recommended, particularly Oil Services and if you do regular short trips, one of the best ways to prepare your car for winter is to charge or if that is nor practical to change your battery.
This photographs shows a number of pulleys that are driven by the serpentine belt on a 5 Series BMW.
Each pulley serves a specific purpose including power steering, water pump, air conditioning and so on.
Manufacturers have recommended lifespan of belts and also pulleys that are driven by it these may also need to be changed as part of periodic service intervals, ideally before they fail.
Batteries are one of the most critical components in our BMW cars and often overlooked during maintenance intervals. Whilst batteries can last a long time, in some cases over 10 years, once they begin to show signs of losing charge it is best to replace them to avoid being let down.
Battery registration
BMW cars require new batteries to be registered in the car’s computer. This is because over time the internal chemistry of the battery goes through changes and energy storage capacity of the battery depletes, just as we find with ageing smart phones that do not hold as much charge as they did when new.
BMW cars are equipped with adaptive intelligent battery management electronics that change charging profiles based on ageing of the battery. This therefore raises the question of what happens if we fit a new battery but not inform the computer.
What happens if we do not ‘register’ a new battery is that the car’s battery charger circuits continue to charge the battery as if it was the same old one and this does not result in optimal performance, even though you have fitted a new battery.
Specialist equipment is needed to register the new battery and this is one of the reasons why BMW drivers are compelled to appoint the services of their main dealer or a specialist garage to change their batteries, which is otherwise not the most difficult task for a competent DIY person.
The registration process is shown in the video below, as we would carry out upon replacement of your battery.